


And Drink It Up

by Five



Category: Hadestown - Mitchell
Genre: Gen, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-02
Updated: 2018-11-02
Packaged: 2019-08-16 18:25:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 939
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16500452
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Five/pseuds/Five
Summary: Finding her alone after tragedy, Persephone takes Eurydice under her wing, determined to protect her.





	And Drink It Up

“Hades-” Persephone said, one morning, not long after Orpheus is gone. It was a morning after a long night. It was a night marked in Persephone’s memory by seeing Eurydice’s shadow pass under lamppost, shivering and shaking and her clothes loosened by weight lost.   
“ **Darling** .” Hades replied, but did not look up from his desk. Persephone kicked the chair across from him out of the way and sat on the edge of his desk.   
“I’ve been thinking- if I needed a person- a worker of yours, to do some work for me, to help me out when I need-“   
“ **An assistant? Take what you need.** ” She nodded. An assistant. If that’s what she needed to be to get out of the mill. Hades handed her a key to his files and let her on to sift. 

***

Not long before sundown, after hours of searching through contracts which seemed impossible in number, Persephone found what she was looking for.    
“This one.”   
“ **Eurydice. The troublemaker’s girl** .”    
“She’s a hard worker. I want her.”   
“ **She’s a hard worker. In the mill.** ”   
“Change her assignment.”   
“ **Very well.** ” He opened the file and changed a few lines.   
  
“Am I in trouble?” Eurydice asked, her voice small but set on what she was saying. She looked around the room, something far too big to be called a closet, thought that’s what it appeared to be. It was bigger than any house Eurydice had ever lived in, and it wasn’t empty. Mirrored vanity tables, bookshelves of books and baubles and walls covered in paintings and charts and maps enclosed the room. Clothes, simple and workable like Eurydice always wore, but touched with a grace and glamor she could only ever have dreamed of hung against one wall. Along the others were an array of evening gowns in emeralds and lifeless jewel tones. It wasn’t a bedroom, certainly, but by the worn, olive divan tucked into the corner with a rumpled blanket spilling over it, one could see it had been one, on some days. And hidden in every crevice of the room was something alive and green and growing: It was a dream. It was a cage.    
  
Persephone smiled. “No. You’re out of it.” She wrapped Eurydice in a coat of soft brown wool and sat her on the divan. “Tea?”   
“I don’t understand. They, they said...said I’d have to work— forever.”   
“I need an assistant. Someone to help me with my day to day tasks.”   
“Which are?”   
“Being bored and being more bored.” Persephone poured a cup of hot tea into fine china and placed it on the end table beside Eurydice. She tipped the teapot to pour her own but quickly decided instead for some coffee. And for a splash of something else.   
The tea tasted like life and like home. In Hadestown, food was never scarce at least. Eurydice could be grateful for that. But it dissolved on the tongue and tasted of nothing more than sustenance. Eurydice melted into the malty sweetness.   
“Why?”   
“Because I can’t bring you home,” Persephone said. She sat beside Eurydice and thought of what she did not say.  _ Because I cannot break down the wall. Because I cannot reverse a contract. Because he couldn’t. Because he loved you and he looked for you. And now I need to keep looking after you. _   
Eurydice didn’t know what else Persephone might have said in that silence, but she understood. She looked to say something and realized in that silence that Persephone had started to cry.    


***

“I want to show you something,” Persephone whispered, opening the door to Eurydice’s modest room down the hall from her own. Eurydice rose from bed like her life depended on how quickly she dressed.   
“Take your time.” She shut the door behind her.   
  
Eurydice came dressed as she did when Persephone took her out, her worker’s uniform hiding something from a small new wardrobe, just to get around until she could be herself. Without a word, Persephone walked her out of the massive skyscraper of mirrored glass and onto the hot bustling streets. They stepped around buildings of tenement-barracks, through alleys and backroads, dodging automobiles and familiar faces. Eurydice figures they were there when Persephone stopped, though where “there” was she couldn’t say. It was an older building, ivy absorbing brick, absorbing Greek columns. Ageless and abandoned. So it appeared.   
Persephone pushed up her sleeves and pulled out a loose brick to reveal a door handle. She pulled it open and turned over her shoulder to give a smile. Eurydice followed her through the opening and down a spiraling stair.    
  


“Welcome to my speakeasy. Morning, boys!” A few lonely souls raised a toast to her as she made her way behind the bar- if one could call it a bar. It was a great, gnarled and ancient looking tree, with a long and heavy branch making a sort of bar top. Behind the bar, the tree grew high and in each knot and twisted branch was a bottle or jar of glittering glass. Persephone grabbed down three bottles.

  
She gave Eurydice the first bottle, tall and blue. Eurydice opened it, and fed herself on moonshine. The second was clear and splashed with something gold. Eurydice opened it and warmed her skin with sunlight.    
  
Persephone held the third close to her chest while she opened it, cracking open the bottle with its warm amber glow. It’s contents released themselves into the hot dusky air, smelling of summertime and carrying light out of the bottle. And out from the glass it spilled, a voice from the bottle, singing  _ la la la la la la la ... _ __   
  



End file.
